Description

This jaw-dropping, award-winning, landmark series from the BBC’s Natural History Unit presents the epic story of life on Earth. Four years in production, over 2000 days in the field, using 71 cameramen filming across 204 locations in 62 countries, this is the ultimate portrait of our planet. A stunning television experience that combines rare action, unimaginable scale, impossible locations, and intimate moments with our planet's best-loved, wildest, and most elusive creatures. From the highest mountains to the deepest rivers, this blockbuster series takes you on an unforgettable journey through the challenging seasons and the daily struggle for survival in Earth's most extreme habitats. Using a budget of unprecedented proportions, HD photography, and unique, specially developed filming techniques, Planet Earth takes you to places you have never seen before, to experience sights and sounds you may never experience again.

The lives of animals and plants are dominated by the sun and fresh water which trigger seasonal journeys. The latest technology and aerial photography enable the Planet Earth team to track some of the greatest mass migrations.

Tour the mightiest mountain ranges, starting with the birth of a mountain at one of the lowest places on Earth and ending at the summit of Everest. One of Earth's rarest phenomena is a lava lake that has been erupting for over 100 years. The same forces built the Simian Mountains where troops of gelada baboons live, nearly a thousand strong. In the Rockies, grizzlies build winter dens inside avalanche-prone slopes. The programme also brings us astounding images of a snow leopard hunting on the Pakistan peaks, a world first.

Follow the descent of rivers from their mountain sources to the sea. Watch spectacular waterfalls, fly inside the Grand Canyon and explore the wildlife in the world's deepest lake. Planet Earth captures unique and dramatic moments of animal behaviour: a showdown between smooth-coated otters and mugger crocodiles; deep-diving long tailed macaques; massive flocks of snow geese on the wing and a piranha frenzy in the perilous waters of the world's largest wetland.

The Cave of Swallows in Mexico is a 400m vertical shaft, deep enough to engulf the Empire State Building. The Lechuguilla cave system in the USA is 193km long with astonishing crystal formations. Caves are remarkable habitats with equally bizarre wildlife. Cave angel fish cling to the walls behind waterfalls with microscopic hooks on their fins. Cave swiftlets navigate by echo-location and build nests out of saliva. The Texas cave salamander has neither eyes nor pigment. Planet Earth gets unique access to a hidden world of stalactites, stalagmites, snotites and troglodytes.

Around 30% of the land's surface is desert, the most varied of our ecosystems despite the lack of rain. Saharan sandstorms reach nearly a mile high and desert rivers run for a single day. In the Gobi Desert, rare Bactrian camels get moisture from the snow. In the Atacama, guanacos survive by licking dew off cactus spines. The brief blooming of Death Valley triggers a plague of locusts 65km wide and 160km long. A unique aerial voyage over the Namibian desert reveals elephants on a long trek for food and desert lions searching for wandering oryx.

The Arctic and Antarctic experience the most extreme seasons on Earth. Time-lapse cameras watch a colony of emperor penguins, transforming them into a single organism. The film reveals new science about the dynamics of emperor penguin behaviour. In the north, unique aerial images show a polar bear swimming more than 100km. Diving for up to two minutes at a time. The exhausted polar bear later attacks a herd of walrus in a true clash of the Titans.

After filming for three years, Planet Earth finally captures the shy Mongolian gazelle. Only a handful of people have witnessed its annual migration. Don't miss the bizarre-looking Tibetan fox, captured on film for the first time. Over six weeks the team follow a pride of 30 lions as they attempt to hunt elephants. Using the latest night vision equipment, the crew film the chaotic battles that ensue at close quarters.

Jungles cover roughly three per cent of our planet yet contain 50 per cent of the world's species. High-definition cameras enable unprecedented views of animals living on the dark jungle floor. In the Ngogo forest the largest chimpanzee group in the world defends its territory from neighbouring groups. Other jungle specialists include parasitic fungi which infiltrate an insect host, feed on it, and then burst out of its body.

Discover the Taiga forest, on the edge of the Arctic - a silent world of stunted conifers. The trees may be small but filming from the air reveals its true scale. A third of all trees on Earth grow here and during the short summer they produce enough oxygen to change the atmosphere. In California General Sherman, a giant sequoia, is the largest living thing on the planet, ten times the size of a blue whale. The oldest organisms alive are bristlecone pines. At more than 4,000 years old they pre-date the pyramids. But the baobab forests of Madagascar are perhaps the strangest of all.

Life goes to extraordinary lengths to survive this immense realm. A 30 tonne whale shark gorges on a school of fish and the unique overhead heli-gimbal camera reveals common dolphins rocketing at more than 30km an hour. Descending into the abyss, deep sea octopus fly with wings and vampire squid use bioluminescence to create an extraordinary colour display. The first ever time-lapse footage taken from 2,000m down captures eels, crabs and giant isopods eating a carcass, completely consuming it within three hours.

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Customer Reviews

The best documentary ever made!

by
Awesome-August

I've been waiting for Planet Earth to come on iTunes for over a year! This series is incredible and I am totally gonna buy the whole season! Planet Earth is awesome and is a series that will blow your mind whether you're watching a snow leopard hunting in the Himalayan mountains or a bird of paradise dancing around, trying to impress a female in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

Fantastic!

by
Nicksumus

These are awesome. There is no doubt about it. I am actually willing to spend this much money on all of them.My favorite is the deep ocean one and this one part on the "Seasonal Forests" one (I think) where the ducks jump from the tree.Defianatly purchace these.

Best non-fiction ever! And in HD!

by
Dave41195

This is probably the only show that I would buy the entire season of. Completely flawless and spectaculer. You don't want to miss a second of this. Buy the whole thing in HD. It's expensive, but you won't regret it.